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   Trip Planning

I actually spent one day in Manhattan in 1984. I was flying to Egypt and the plane had an engine problem so we had to wait for another plane to fly Chuck's Birthday in Indonesia - 2017 Chuck's Birthday in Sicily - 2018 back from Athens Greece to replace the plane that was malfunctioning! It was around 8:00 a.m. and they decided to put us on a bus to downtown Manhattan. Greek airlines put us up at a high end hotel next to the famous Grand Central train station. We were beat but I managed to walk through the train station and then fell into bed as I was so tired. Flying from the City to New York, then sitting for hours in the airport, on the plane and back in the airport. They woke us up in the late afternoon and we had a nice lunch and back on the bus to the airport and finally off to Athens, then Cairo Egypt! What a trip, this was only the beginning of an unbelievable trip to Egypt! Check out my Egypt link if interested!

Here I am in 2017 on a Holland American Cruise Ship sailing for two weeks around the islands of Indonesia, celebrating my 77th birthday!

On the right side is my 78th birthday celebration in Sicily on the Viking Star Ship, sailing the Mediterraneum to Sardinia, Algeria and Spain in 2018.

My 80th birthday was celebrated in DuBai, Oman, India and Sri Lanks, and on the Indian Ocean in 2020.

My 82nd birthday was celebrated in Reno Nevada of all places in 2022.

My 83rd birthday was celebrated in Monterey and the Monterey Bay Aguarium in 2023.

I decided to do the tours in New York City either on my own or with the tours setup by the hotel I stay at.

I might stay if possible, at the Men's YMCA or a hotel with resonable costs.




   View of San Francisco as I leave for New York

This view of San Francisco and the Bay Area was taken from my apartment at Fox Plaza on the 28th floor, a fantastic view day or night, regardless of the weather! Leaving one great city for another great city, one one the Pacific Ocean and one on the Atlantic Ocean!

Chuck's View of San Francisco




   A Map New York City and Boroughts

Click on the following link to view a map of New York City:    A Map New York City and Boroughts

New York & New York State




   A Map of Manhattan & Points of Interest

Click on the following link to view a map of Manhattan and various points of interest I may want to visit.

Map of Manhattan & Points of Interest




   Pod 51 Hotel Lodging - 230 East 51st Street

Click on the following link to view one of the cheaper places to stay. A friend living in my building told me he uses Pod 51 Hotels all over the world, a European Hotel chain. Very clean.

Pod 51 Hotel




   West Side YMCA Lodging - 5 West 63rd Street

Click on the following link to view one of the cheaper places to stay. So far the average for five nights is around $1,000.00 plius. This YMCA cost is around $500.00. A big differance.

West Side YMCA




   A Brief History of New York City

Brief History of New York City

The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2016 population of 8,537,673 distributed over a land area of about 302.6 square miles (784 km2), New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the United States. Located at the southern tip of the state of New York, the city is the center of the New York metropolitan area, one of the most populous urban agglomerations in the world, with an estimated 20.2 million people in its 2016 Metropolitan Statistical Area and 23.7 million residents in its Combined Statistical Area.

Read More.......




   Tours of New York City - Viator

Viator Tours Perhaps

I think a few guided tours the first few days of the trip might be helpful to get an overview of the city. I see Viaton has a lot of different tours around New York. Perhaps also, a hop on and off bus tour. I have been told the subway system is easy to follow. Time will tell.

Viator Tours




   Friends Suggestions on Visiting Manhattan

Patti Memoli Wood

I met my friend Patti 55 years ago when we worked at the Fireman's Fund Insurance computer center in San Francisco. It was the largest computer center west of Chicago! She worte the following:

Chuck, Talk to me when planning New York. The Hop-0n Hop-off bus tours are the best and take you all over the city including the Statue of Liberty & Ellis Island. There are 3 or 4 tours. You buy one pass for all. We've stayed at the Doubletree Times Square, reasonable. We have also stayed at the Embassy Suites - free breakfast & cocktail munchies.

You can probably stay at the Hilton Midtown for under $200 a day. Pull up the hotel and enter some dates, then several sites will pop up. They will show you great offers. Check out the Hop On Hop Off website.

Wherever you go there will be fees to get in. We always take the whole tour before choosing where to go back to.

Must see - the Met, Guggenheim and Whitney museums. Must see St Patrick's and 30 Rock, terrific restaurant in the basement - yummy milkshakes. Walking through Central Park is fun.

DO NOT buy any food from the street vendors.

Best months to go are April/May, end of Sept thru October.

March 15, 2023 - Did some more checking. You can probably stay at the Hilton Midtown for under $200 a day. Pull up the hotel and enter some dates, then several sites will pop up. They will show you great offers.

To Manhattan: JFK airport, take a bus. Newark airport: take the train.

John Figg

I met John Figg about ten years ago at the Central YMCA of San Francisco. He suggested I stay at the Library Hotel in Manhattan. Sounded good to me until I saw the rates, lowest price was $450.00, a step up is around $650.00 a night.

Time will tell if I get anymore advice from friends on visiting New York City and Manhattan!




  Day 1

    Transfer from the airport to the hotel

Settling in at the hotel and beginning my walk around the area to feel at home in the Big Apple!

New York City Visit    New York City Visit

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  Day

    Statue of Liberty

The Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World; French: La Liberté éclairant le monde) is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor in New York City, in the United States. The copper statue, a gift from the people of France to the people of the United States, was designed by French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and built by Gustave Eiffel. The statue was dedicated on October 28, 1886. Statue of Liberty

The Statue of Liberty is a figure of a robed woman representing Libertas, a Roman liberty goddess. She holds a torch above her head with her right hand, and in her left hand carries a tabula ansata inscribed in Roman numerals with "JULY IV MDCCLXXVI" (July 4, 1776), the date of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. A broken chain lies at her feet. The statue became an icon of freedom and of the United States, and was a welcoming sight to immigrants arriving from abroad.

Bartholdi was inspired by a French law professor and politician, Édouard René de Laboulaye, who is said to have commented in 1865 that any monument raised to U.S. independence would properly be a joint project of the French and American peoples. Because of the post-war instability in France, work on the statue did not commence until the early 1870s. In 1875, Laboulaye proposed that the French finance the statue and the U.S. provide the site and build the pedestal. Bartholdi completed the head and the torch-bearing arm before the statue was fully designed, and these pieces were exhibited for publicity at international expositions.

The torch-bearing arm was displayed at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, and in Madison Square Park in Manhattan from 1876 to 1882. Fundraising proved difficult, especially for the Americans, and by 1885 work on the pedestal was threatened by lack of funds. Publisher Joseph Pulitzer, of the New York World, started a drive for donations to finish the project and attracted more than 120,000 contributors, most of whom gave less than a dollar. The statue was built in France, shipped overseas in crates, and assembled on the completed pedestal on what was then called Bedloe's Island. The statue's completion was marked by New York's first ticker-tape parade and a dedication ceremony presided over by President Grover Cleveland.

The statue was administered by the United States Lighthouse Board until 1901 and then by the Department of War; since 1933 it has been maintained by the National Park Service. Public access to the balcony around the torch has been barred for safety since 1916.

Note: The photo of the Statue of Liberty was taken as the Queen Mary II sailed into New York on May, 5th, 2019. We boarded in Southhamton England and sailed for five days to the Newark port. We woke up and looked out the window early in the morning and were surprised to see the Statue of Liberty from our Cabin. First time I saw the statue and what a nice surprise!

Statue of Liberty    Statue of Liberty

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  Day

    Guggenheim Museum

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue between 88th and 89th Streets on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously expanding collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions throughout the year. The museum was established by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1939 as the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, under the guidance of its first director, Hilla von Rebay. The museum adopted its current name in 1952, three years after the death of its founder Solomon R. Guggenheim.

The museum's building, a landmark work of 20th-century architecture designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, drew controversy for the unusual shape of its display spaces and took 15 years to design and build; it was completed in 1959. It consists of a six-story, bowl-shaped main gallery to the south, a four-story "monitor" to the north, and a ten-story annex to the northeast. The main gallery contains a six-story helical ramp that extends along its perimeter, as well as a central ceiling skylight. The Thannhauser Collection is housed within the top three stories of the monitor, and there are additional galleries in the annex and a learning center in the basement. The building underwent expansion and extensive renovations from 1990 to 1992, when the annex was built, and it was renovated again from 2005 to 2008.

The museum's collection has grown over the decades and is founded upon several important private collections, beginning with that of Solomon R. Guggenheim. The collection, which includes around 8,000 works as of 2022, is shared with sister museums in the Spanish city of Bilbao and elsewhere. In 2013, nearly 1.2 million people visited the museum, and it hosted the most popular exhibition in New York City.[

Guggenheim Museum    Guggenheim Museum

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  Day

    Hayden Planetarium

From the outside, the Hayden Planetarium - a sphere measuring 87 feet (26.5 meters) in diameter—appears to float inside a six-story-tall glass cube. Inside, video programming, under the direction of renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, offers glimpses of far-off galaxies, planets, and stars, all in ultra-sharp resolution. Visitors can witness the birth of the universe in the Big Bang Theater; walk the Heilbrunn Cosmic Pathway, which illustrates the history of the universe from the Big Bang to present day; and check outDark Universe, the planetarium’s popular space show that charts the discoveries that have led humankind to greater knowledge about the universe. (It’s narrated by Mr. deGrasse Tyson himself.)
Hayden Planetarium    Hayden Planetarium

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  Day

    Greenwich Village

Greenwich Village or simply The Village, is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village also contains several subsections, including the West Village west of Seventh Avenue and the Meatpacking District in the northwest corner of Greenwich Village.

Its name comes from Groenwijck, Dutch for "Green District". In the 20th century, Greenwich Village was known as an artists' haven, the bohemian capital, the cradle of the modern LGBT movement, and the East Coast birthplace of both the Beat and '60s counterculture movements. Greenwich Village contains Washington Square Park, as well as two of New York City's private colleges, New York University (NYU) and The New School.

Greenwich Village is part of Manhattan Community District 2, and is patrolled by the 6th Precinct of the New York City Police Department.[1] Greenwich Village has undergone extensive gentrification and commercialization; the four ZIP Codes that constitute the Village – 10011, 10012, 10003, and 10014 - were all ranked among the ten most expensive in the United States by median housing price in 2014, according to Forbes, with residential property sale prices in the West Village neighborhood typically exceeding US$2,100/sq ft ($23,000/m2) in 2017.

Greenwich Village    Greenwich Village

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  Day

    Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, colloquially "the Met",[a] is the largest art museum in the Americas and the most-visited museum in the Western Hemisphere. Its permanent collection contains over two million works,[1] divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 Fifth Avenue, along the Museum Mile on the eastern edge of Central Park on Manhattan's Upper East Side, is by area one of the world's largest art museums. The first portion of the approximately 2-million-square-foot (190,000 m2) building was built in 1880. A much smaller second location, The Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan, contains an extensive collection of art, architecture, and artifacts from medieval Europe.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 with its mission to bring art and art education to the American people. The museum's permanent collection consists of works of art from classical antiquity and ancient Egypt, paintings, and sculptures from nearly all the European Old Masters, and an extensive collection of American and modern art. The Met maintains extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanian, Byzantine, and Islamic art. The museum is home to encyclopedic collections of musical instruments, costumes, and accessories, as well as antique weapons and armor from around the world. Several notable interiors, ranging from 1st-century Rome through modern American design, are installed in its galleries.

Metropolitan Museum of Art    Metropolitan Museum of Art

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  Day

    One World Trade Center

One World Trade Center, also known as One World Trade, One WTC, and formerly the Freedom Tower (still sometimes used colloquially), is the main building of the rebuilt World Trade Center complex in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Designed by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, One World Trade Center is the tallest building in the United States, the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, and the seventh-tallest in the world. The supertall structure has the same name as the North Tower of the original World Trade Center, which was destroyed in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The new skyscraper stands on the northwest corner of the 16 - acre (6.5 ha) World Trade Center site, on the site of the original 6 World Trade Center. It is bounded by West Street to the west, Vesey Street to the north, Fulton Street to the south, and Washington Street to the east.
One World Trade Center    One World Trade Center

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  Day

    The Cloisters

The Cloisters, also known as the Met Cloisters, is a museum in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, New York City. The museum, situated in Fort Tryon Park, specializes in European medieval art and architecture, with a focus on the Romanesque and Gothic periods. Governed by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it contains a large collection of medieval artworks shown in the architectural settings of French monasteries and abbeys. Its buildings are centered around four cloisters—the Cuxa, Saint-Guilhem, Bonnefont and Trie—that were acquired by American sculptor and art dealer George Grey Barnard in France before 1913, and moved to New York. Barnard's collection was bought for the museum by financier and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Other major sources of objects were the collections of J. P. Morgan and Joseph Brummer.

The museum's building was designed by the architect Charles Collens, on a site on a steep hill, with upper and lower levels. It contains medieval gardens and a series of chapels and themed galleries, including the Romanesque, Fuentidueña, Unicorn, Spanish, and Gothic rooms. The design, layout, and ambiance of the building are intended to evoke a sense of medieval European monastic life. It holds about 5,000 works of art and architecture, all European and mostly dating from the Byzantine to the early Renaissance periods, mainly during the 12th through 15th centuries. The varied objects include stone and wood sculptures, tapestries, illuminated manuscripts and panel paintings, of which the best known include the c. 1422 Early Netherlandish Mérode Altarpiece and the c. 1495 - 1505 Flemish Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries.

Rockefeller purchased the museum site in Washington Heights in 1930 and donated it to the Metropolitan in 1931. Upon its opening on May 10, 1938, the Cloisters was described as a collection "shown informally in a picturesque setting, which stimulates imagination and creates a receptive mood for enjoyment".

The Cloisters    The Cloisters

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  Day

    Empire State Building

The Empire State Building is a 102-story Art Deco skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The building was designed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon and built from 1930 to 1931. Its name is derived from "Empire State", the nickname of the state of New York. The building has a roof height of 1,250 feet (380 m) and stands a total of 1,454 feet (443.2 m) tall, including its antenna. The Empire State Building was the world's tallest building until the first tower of the World Trade Center was topped out in 1970; following the September 11 attacks in 2001, the Empire State Building was New York City's tallest building until it was surpassed in 2012. As of 2022, the building is the seventh-tallest building in New York City, the ninth-tallest completed skyscraper in the United States, the 54th - tallest in the world, and the sixth-tallest freestanding structure in the Americas.

The site of the Empire State Building, in Midtown South on the west side of Fifth Avenue between West 33rd and 34th Streets, was developed in 1893 as the Waldorf–Astoria Hotel. In 1929, Empire State Inc. acquired the site and devised plans for a skyscraper there. The design for the Empire State Building was changed fifteen times until it was ensured to be the world's tallest building. Construction started on March 17, 1930, and the building opened thirteen and a half months afterward on May 1, 1931. Despite favorable publicity related to the building's construction, because of the Great Depression and World War II, its owners did not make a profit until the early 1950s.

The building's Art Deco architecture, height, and observation decks have made it a popular attraction. Around four million tourists from around the world annually visit the building's 86th- and 102nd-floor observatories; an additional indoor observatory on the 80th floor opened in 2019. The Empire State Building is an international cultural icon: it has been featured in more than 250 television series and films since the film King Kong was released in 1933. The building's size has become the global standard of reference to describe the height and length of other structures. A symbol of New York City, the building has been named as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World by the American Society of Civil Engineers. It was ranked first on the American Institute of Architects' List of America's Favorite Architecture in 2007. Additionally, the Empire State Building and its ground-floor interior were designated city landmarks by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1980, and were added to the National Register of Historic Places as a National Historic Landmark in 1986.

; Empire State Building    ; Empire State Building

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  Day

    Central Park

Central Park is an urban park in New York City located between the Upper West and Upper East Sides of Manhattan. It is the fifth-largest park in the city, covering 843 acres (341 ha). It is the most visited urban park in the United States, with an estimated 42 million visitors annually as of 2016, and is the most filmed location in the world.

After proposals for a large park in Manhattan during the 1840s, it was approved in 1853 to cover 778 acres (315 ha). In 1857, landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition for the park with their "Greensward Plan". Construction began the same year; existing structures, including a majority - Black settlement named Seneca Village, were seized through eminent domain and razed. The park's first areas were opened to the public in late 1858. Additional land at the northern end of Central Park was purchased in 1859, and the park was completed in 1876. After a period of decline in the early 20th century, New York City parks commissioner Robert Moses started a program to clean up Central Park in the 1930s. The Central Park Conservancy, created in 1980 to combat further deterioration in the late 20th century, refurbished many parts of the park starting in the 1980s.

Central Park    Central Park

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Statue of Liberty    Statue of Liberty

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   View of San Francisco as I come back from Manhattan

This view of San Francisco and the Bay Area was taken from my apartment at Fox Plaza on the 28th floor after one of our many winter and spring rains. This year was a fantastic wet season, flooding but filling all the resevoirs!

Rainvow and San Francisco





    Created on: 2019.03.10
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Updated on: 2023.04.29